Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

For the second time in the short life of this blog, I’ve found myself the recipient of a coconut from a friend. This time, the coconut was a gift from my buddy Miles (of Now Is Not the Rhyme fame), who just returned from a trip to Hawaii. The last time I got a coconut, I smashed it on my porch. Since I no longer have access to the porch, or the blog on which I recorded the smash, you’ll have to take my word for it.

This time around, I decided that since I don’t like anything even remotely coconut related, I ought to just make a pina colada; at least it has booze in it, right? And since I was using fresh coconut, I should use fresh pineapple, right? Of course I should!

Look at this cuddly guy

Well, as it turns out, making a pina colada isn’t as easy as shaking out the juice inside the coconut, and adding some rum and pineapple juice. First of all, there’s the matter of cracking the coconut open.

Not a recommended method

Last time around, I could just smash this fruity rock on the ground, but this time I had to actually capture all the juice and whatnot. I hope the old man downstairs didn’t mind me pounding a coconut with a hammer in a metal pot on the floor. Woops.

As I said, it’s not as easy as just pouring out the juice inside the coconut, like in the cartoons. No, there’s a whole complicated process, which I found here. The smashing was fun enough, but then I had to like, work with the meat of the coconut, which I find to be gross. This recipe for coconut milk asks me to peel the brown skin off the pieces of cocomeat, using my vegetable peeler. Which would be great, if my peeler was made out of effing corundum. However, it’s just plain old steel, so I had to throw the cocomeat chunks, brown skin and all, into the blender. Which proceeded to not blend too good. But oh well. (Did I forget to tell you that I had to throw this thing in the oven? Sup with that?)

What will protect you now, coconut meat?

So then I had to put the cocomeat into a clean cloth, soak it in warm water, and then squeeze the juice out. Which leads me to the most pressing question of the night. There are entire economies built on the pina colada. Are they all chopping up bits of coconut meat and soaking them in warm water and squeezing them through cheesecloth (to say nothing of draining all that pineapple puree through a coffee filter)? If so, a tip of the cap. Because it’s a pain in the ass!

See you in hell, gratings

So I’m sitting here, with my bare hands, wringing away at this mound of moist, tepid coconut shavings. All of that squeezing only left me with like, three quarters of a cup of sweet, sweet coconut milk. Tell me that doesn’t look appetizing.

Feel free to say no

And after all that (I apologize for not taking a picture of all the dishes I wound up dirtying. Suffice it to say, it’s a big pile), after traipsing about the West End getting this fresh pineapple, after cracking open this coconut that traveled all the way from the great state of Hawaii, after all of the chopping and grating and squeezing, after all of that concern for the best, freshest ingredients, I had the decency to only have half a handle of Ron Romero Imported Rum in the closet. For those of you unfamiliar with Senor Romero, just know that his rum comes in a plastic bottle. Mm mm good.

Not worth it!

The end product was actually really good. Creamy, not too much ice, sweet, not too much rum. I would have been profoundly satisfied, had it not been the most arduous task I’ve ever performed in the kitchen. And I just made a strawberry rhubarb pie!

Tags: coconut, incredibly arduous recipes, pina colada

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.